Editorial: Take What They Will Give You

We'll admit to having been caught off guard by the European Council's approval of the US-EU open skies agreement (set to be signed formally at the end of April). With Washington having withdrawn its foreign control NPRM last fall and two previous open skies agreements having failed, there seemed little reason to predict success this time. We also had not expected the Franco-German alignment to prevail over the UK aviation establishment, which had made clear its lack of enthusiasm for the deal.

We'll admit to having been caught off guard by the European Council's approval of the US-EU open skies agreement (set to be signed formally at the end of April). With Washington having withdrawn its foreign control NPRM last fall and two previous open skies agreements having failed, there seemed little reason to predict success this time. We also had not expected the Franco-German alignment to prevail over the UK aviation establishment, which had made clear its lack of enthusiasm for the ...